1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to furniture and more particularly pertains to a cabinet that can house a folding mattress and allows the mattress to be deployed as a bed.
2. Background of the Prior Art
The broad concept of a cabinet bed is not new. Nevertheless, prior cabinet beds tended to suffer from one or more of several disabilities that limited their usefulness; for example, bulky and un-prepossessing appearance, complicated mechanism and inconvenient operation to deploy into a bed rendering it difficult to fold and unfold the bed and compounding its costs, unstable sleeping platform upon deployment, lack of storage drawers, significant lack of comfort, and other problems.
These disabilities are obvious to the extent that, though the demand for space-saving beds is high, there is a dearth of cabinet beds available today.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,638,249 to Katsigarakis, as well as several other U.S. and foreign patents, suffer from the similar disability of having the front and back panels of the cabinet hinged to a central base from which deployment of the sleeping platform is accomplished, with or without mechanical mechanisms, by folding the front and back panels into a horizontal position to create a mattress platform. This basic method of deployment is such that there can be no functioning storage drawers and that any objects placed on top of the cabinet when in the closed position must be removed prior to deployment into a bed.
U.S. Pat. No. 186,632 to Smith; U.S. Pat. No. 189,303 to Crosby; and U.S. Pat. No. 239,805 to Knapp all describe a cabinet bed in which the front of the cabinet folds out into a horizontal position to create a sleeping platform supported by a ‘foot’ at the end of the front panel. The ‘foot’ is hinged to the front panel and is folded downward and held in place to support the mattress platform at the same height as the base of the cabinet. These suffer from the similar disability of deploying the bed, such that the mattress deploys with the front panel thereby creating additional weight in addition to which, once in the horizontal position, the person deploying the bed must support the weight of both the panel and mattress while ensuring that the ‘feet’ are securely in place.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,170,149 to Gustafson is a cabinet bed that deploys using a two-piece platform that nests into each other. The cabinet mattress platform is supported by a pair of hinged legs that rotate downward to provide support where the two-pieces of the platform nest. Another piece on a hinge and spring rotates out and down to support the foot of the bed. The Gustafson cabinet suffers from a number of disabilities including: a complicated mechanism requiring stop pins and angle irons to prevent the foot from going beyond the vertical position; lack of storage drawers; lack of continuous support of the mattress platform, a mattress platform that deploys close to the floor; and an overall design that requires any number of independent actions to safely deploy the platform and mattress, making it unwieldy and difficult to deploy.
While each of the above mentioned devices may be effective to some degree in providing a folding cabinet bed, none of the references disclose a simple cabinet with few moving parts that can open to reveal a platform bed of any height supporting a variety of mattresses in a variety of sizes and containing storage drawers accessible in an open or closed position.